Stone veneer panels are in great demand in the construction industry for all types of surfaces from outside wall surfaces to elevator interiors, because of their great natural beauty and light weight as well as economy in use and transportation and ease of installation. However, presently they are difficult to make and are expensive due to high production losses (low yield). Typically an unpolished 3/4 inch thick slab of stone is laminated on each face with a honeycomb backing sheet or a similar structural reinforcing sheet. Then the slab is vertically positioned under a bridge saw and cut vertically down the center of the slab. The two stone veneered panels resulting from the cutting are then each placed in a machine where their respective unattached faces are polished or otherwise finished. This technique suffers a number of shortcomings which result in inefficiency, low yield and consequent low overall production so that supply lags far behind demand. The vertical saw cutting suffers from inaccuracy which results in slab losses of as high as 40%. Further, even in those cases where the slabs are useful after the cutting, the sawed surfaces are often so rough that polishing is unsatisfactory. And even where the cut slabs are suitable for polishing the polishing is still difficult and pieces are lost because of the problems inherent in polishing a thin (1/4") slab of stone. A further overriding problem is that when a slab is lost in cutting or finishing, there is also lost the backing sheet and adhesive with all the attendant costs including materials, machine time and labor costs of applying the backing sheet.
Present methods also do not lend themselves well to thermal finishing. Thermal finishing decreases stone strength by as much as 50%, and in this weakened state the stone slabs may be easily broken or destroyed when undergoing current manufacturing techniques.